No heart can conceive that treasury of mercies which lies in this one privilege, in having liberty and ability to approach unto God at all times, according to His mind and will.
         ... John Owen
 
 

         The sorest afflictions never appear intolerable, but when we see them in the wrong light: when we see them in the hand of God, Who dispenses them; when we know that it is our loving Father who abases and distresses us; our sufferings will lose their bitterness and become even a matter of consolation.
         ... Brother Lawrence
 
 

         We see him exalting love for neighbor along with love for God. He reaches out to foreigners who are beyond the borders of the "Israel of God". He seeks the release of captives, prisoners, and slaves. He denounces the scribes and religious leaders who "devour the houses of widows". Despite his well-known requirement of loyalty that surpasses family ties, he insists that a man put the care of his own parents ahead of his obligations to his religion. His treatment of women is radically opposed to the strictures of that day. He exhibits sympathy and understanding toward children. He operates an out-patient clinic wherever he happens to be. He insists upon justice as the basis for everyday dealings between citizens. The social teaching of parables like "the good Samaritan" and incidents such as the encounter with the rich young ruler have had an effect upon his followers that cannot easily be measured. If one summary statement of Jesus' ethics can be made, it is that love of God is best shown by love of fellow men.
         ... Sherwood Eliot Wirt, The Social Conscience of the Evangelical
 
 

         Many a congregation when it assembles in church must look to the angels like a muddy, puddly shore at low tide; littered with every kind of rubbish and odds and ends --a distressing sort of spectacle. And then the tide of worship comes in, and it's all gone: the dead sea-urchins and jelly-fish, the paper and the empty cans and the nameless bits of rubbish. The cleansing sea flows over the whole lot. So we are released from a narrow, selfish outlook on the universe by a common act of worship. Our little human affairs are reduced to their proper proportion when seen over against the spaceless Majesty and Beauty of God.
         ... Evelyn Underhill

         Christianity is a source; no one supply of water and refreshment that comes from it can be called the sum of Christianity. It is a mistake, and may lead to much error, to exhibit any series of maxims, even those of the Sermon on the Mount, as the ultimate sum and formula into which Christianity may be run up.
         ... Matthew Arnold

If we with earnest effort could succeed
To make our life one long, connected prayer,
As lives of some, perhaps, have been and are;
If, never leaving Thee, we have no need
Our wandering spirits back again to lead
Into Thy presence, but continued there
Like angels standing on the highest stair
Of the Sapphire Throne: this were to pray indeed!
         ... Richard C. Trench

         What will you do if your product still further increases next year? You should then destroy again the warehouses which you are now preparing to build, and build bigger. For the reason why God has given you fruitful harvests is that He might either overcome your avarice or condemn it; wherefore you can have no excuse. But you keep for yourself what He wished to be produced through you for the benefit of many -- nay, rather, you rob even yourself of it, since you would better preserve it for yourself if you distributed it to others.
         ... St. Ambrose of Milan
 
 

         There is not anything I know which hath done more mischief to Religion... than the disparaging of Reason, under pretense of respect and favour to it. For hereby the very Foundations of Christian Faith have been undermined, and the World prepared for Atheism. And if Reason must not be beard, the Being of a God, and the Authority of Scripture, can neither be proved nor defended; and so our Faith drops to the Ground like a House that hath no Foundation.
         ... Joseph Glanvill

         How can we know that what Jesus has shown us of God is the truth; or how do we know when we look into the face of Jesus that we are looking into the face of God? The answer is so plain and simple that it is a marvel how intelligent men can manage to miss it as they do. Look at what Christ has done for the soul of man: that is your answer. Christianity is just Christ --nothing more and nothing less. It is a way of life, and He is that way. It is the truth about human destiny, and He is that truth.
         ... R. J. Campbell, The Call of Christ
 
 

         The great thing, and the only thing, is to adore and praise God.
         ... Thomas Merton
 
 

God of pity and love, return to this earth.
Go not so far away, leaving us to evil.
Darkness is loose upon the world, the Devil
Walks in the land, and there is nothing worth.
Death like a dog runs howling from his lair;
His bite has made men mad, they follow after
All howling too, and their demoniac laughter
Drowns like a sea our solitary prayer.
Return, 0 Lord, return. Come with the day,
Come with the light, that men may see once more
Across this earth's uncomfortable floor
The kindly paths, the old and loving way.
Let us not die of evil in the night.
Let there be God again. Let there be light.

         ... Robert Nathan

         The Christian should participate in social and political efforts in order to have an influence in the work, not with the hope of making a paradise (of the earth), but simply to make it more tolerable -- not to diminish the opposition between this world and the Kingdom of God, but simply to modify the opposition between the disorder of this world and the order of preservation that God wants it to have -- not to bring in the Kingdom of God, but so that the Gospel might be proclaimed in order that all men might truly hear the good news.
         ... Jacques Ellul
 
 

Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all they would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.
They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
         ... T. S. Eliot

         Sometimes, when the soul least thinks of it, and when it least desires it, God touches it divinely causing certain recollections of Himself.
         ... John of the Cross
 
 

         Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of his fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil. It is the Heavenly Father's will thus to exercise them so as to put his own children to a definite test. Beginning with Christ, his first-born, he follows this plan with all his children.
         ... John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion

         I cannot answer all the curious questions of the brain concerning prayer and law, not half of them, indeed, and I will not attempt to; but I will cast my anchor here in this revealing fact, that He, the Holiest of the Holy and the Wisest of the Wise, He prays. Therefore I am assured that this anchorage of Divine example will hold the vessel in the tossings of the wildest sea of doubt, and I shall be as safe as He was, if the vessel itself is engulfed in the waves of suffering and sorrow. His act is an argument. His prayer is an inspiration. His achievements are the everlasting and all-sufficient vindication of prayer.
         ... John Clifford, Social Worship

         I do not wish to imply that God the Son could not, absolutely speaking, have become incarnate by a non-virginal conception, any more than I should wish to deny that God might, absolutely speaking, have redeemed mankind without becoming incarnate at all; it is always unwise to place limits to the power of God. What we can see is that both an incarnation and a virginal conception were thoroughly appropriate to the needs and circumstances of the case and were more "natural", in the sense of more appropriate, than the alternatives... In practice, denial of the virginal conception or inability to see its relevance almost always goes with an inadequate understanding of the Incarnation and of the Christian religion in general.
         ... E. L. Mascall, The Secularization of Christianity
 
 

         Only on recognising the true, may we lay down our task of searching further for truth; and only on being satisfied that we have found the holy, are we justified in submitting to its guidance. The duty of following truth at all hazards is not altered, and it is only a false wisdom and prudence which shuns the search. The one chief reason why so much more may be revealed to babes than to the wise and prudent is still simply that, with less calculation and prejudice, they entirely abandon themselves to the leading of truth.
         ... John Oman, Vision and Authority
 
 

         Pray Him to give you what the Scriptures call "an honest and good heart," or "a perfect heart;" and, without waiting, begin at once to obey Him with the best heart you have. Any obedience is better than none. You have to seek His face; obedience is the only way of seeing Him. All your duties are obediences. To do what He bids is to obey Him, and to obey Him is to approach Him. Every act of obedience is an approach -- an approach to Him who is not far off, though He seems so, but close behind this visible screen of things hiding Him from us.
         ... John Henry Newman
 
 

Justice and Judgment are thy throne
         Yet wondrous is thy grace;
While truth and mercy joined in one,
         Invite us near thy face.
         ... Isaac Watts

         I have put no emphasis on the virgin birth in the course of this chapter. This is not because I do not believe in it, for I do; but because, as I understand it, the account of Christ's miraculous birth was given in the Gospels for the sake of those who had already come to believe in him and who wished to know the facts, but was never used as a means of evoking faith in those who were not yet convinced on other grounds as to who he was. After all, a virgin birth would be possible without any implications of deity.
         ... J. N. D. Anderson, Christianity: the Witness of History
 
 

         Faith is not only a commitment to the promises of Christ; faith is also a commitment to the demands of Christ.
         ... William Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter

         Such is our dependence upon God that we are obliged not only to do everything for His sake, but also to seek from Him the very power. This happy necessity of having recourse to Him in all our wants, instead of being grievous to us, should be our greatest consolation. What a happiness is it that we are allowed to speak to Him with confidence; to open our hearts and hold familiar conversation with him, by prayer! He Himself invites us to it.
         ... François Fénelon, Meditation
 
 

 
         Come worship the King,
         That little dear thing,
Asleep on His Mother's soft breast.
         Ye bright stars, bow down,
         Weave for Him a crown,
Christ Jesus by angels confessed.
 

         Come, children, and peep,
         But hush ye, and creep
On tiptoe to where the Babe lies;
         Then whisper His Name
         And lo! like a flame
The glory light shines in His eyes.
 

         Come strong men, and see
         This high mystery,
Tread firm where the shepherds have trod,
         And watch, `mid the hair
         Of the Maiden so fair,
The five little fingers of God.
 

         Come, old men and grey,
         The star leads the way,
It halts and your wanderings cease;
         Look down on His Face
         Then, filled with His Grace,
Depart ye, God's servants, in Peace.
         ... G. A. Studdert Kennedy

The King of glory sends his Son,
To make his entrance on this earth;
Behold the midnight bright as noon,
And heav'nly hosts declare his birth!

 About the young Redeemer's head,
What wonders, and what glories meet!
An unknown star arose, and led
The eastern sages to his feet.

 Simeon and Anna both conspire
The infant Saviour to proclaim;
Inward they felt the sacred fire,
And bless'd the babe, and own'd his name.

 Let pagan hordes blaspheme aloud,
And treat the holy child with scorn;
Our souls adore th' eternal God
Who condescended to be born.
         ... Isaac Watts

The Mother sits by the rough-hewn byre
where her Baby smiles, and the secret fire
shines on her face. Her hand rests by
an iron spike from the wood thrust high
         ("The nails in His hands!" )

 An open chink in the rude, cold shed
lets in the sky, and the Star that led
shepherds and kings pours down its light:
a silver shaft through the frosty night
         ("The spear in His side!")

 Her hands reach out, as to push away
the cross-crowned hill and the bloody day;
they touch a rough, unyielding wall:
the stable side, of stone piled tall
         ("The stone -- rolled away!")
         ... Alesander Flandreau

         The why of natural law is the living Voice of God immanent in His creation. And this word of God which brought all worlds into being cannot be understood to mean the Bible, for it is not a written or printed word at all, but the expression of the will of God spoken into the structure of all things. This word of God is the breath of God filling the world with living potentiality. The Voice of God is the most powerful force in nature, indeed the only force in nature, for all energy is here only because the power-filled Word is being spoken. [Continued]
         ... A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
 
 

         The Bible is the written word of God, and because it is written it is confined and limited by the necessities of ink and paper and leather. The Voice of God, however, is alive and free as the sovereign God is free. "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." The life is in the speaking words. God's word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God's word in the universe. It is the present Voice which makes the written Word all-powerful.
         ... A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
 
 

         A Christian and an unbelieving poet may both be equally original and draw on resources peculiar to themselves, but with this difference. The unbeliever may take his own temperament and experience, just as they happen to stand, and consider them worth communicating simply because they are his. To the Christian his own temperament and experience, as mere fact, and as merely his, are of no value or importance whatsoever: he will deal with them, if at all, only because they are the medium through which, or the position from which, something universally profitable appeared to him.
         ... C. S. Lewis, "Christianity and Literature"

         I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely. I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God.
         ... Meister Eckhart
 
 

         While sitting on the bank of a river one day, I picked up a solid round stone from the water and broke it open. It was perfectly dry in spite of the fact that it had been immersed in water for centuries. The same is true of many people in the Western world. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity; they live immersed in the waters of its benefits. And yet it has not penetrated their hearts; they do not love it. The fault is not in Christianity, but in men's hearts, which have been hardened by materialism and intellectualism.
         ... Sadhu Sundar Singh

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